This is awesome. It's such an unnecessary pain in the ass that more manufacturers don't support a greater array of codecs, containers, and formats.

Typically, the only makers who did support stuff were tiny never heard of companies- mostly from Asia, typically China. It was a stopgap solution, often trading build quality and refinement of features in exchange for playback ability.

This is a big deal for MS as Sony will almost certainly not be following suit, as they are in part a content / media creator, and have a stake in controlling how media and content is delivered or accessible.

Quote:

BGR
The Xbox One is about to become movie pirates’ best friend

The Xbox One just got an incredibly cool feature that you won't see on the PS4

By Brad Reed
Tuesday August 12, 2014, 4:35 PM

Microsoft announced a huge new update to the Xbox One on Tuesday and it included a full-scale video player capable of supporting just about any kind of file you can think of, including including .avi, .jpg, .gif, .mov, .mp3, .mpeg, .wma and .wmv files. Ars Technica’s Peter Bright was particularly struck by one codec mentioned that he says could be of great use to people who like watching pirated movies and TV shows: MKV containers.

FROM EARLIER: Microsoft continues to outpace Sony with another huge Xbox One update.

“While MKV is a rarity in the world of explicitly authorized video, it’s quite abundant in the murky world of pirated TV shows,” he writes. “Native MKV support will make watching this content substantially easier on the Xbox One.”

Couple this with the fact that the Xbox One will gain support for DLNA streaming through home network devices — which will let the Xbox stream content from devices being played on Windows PCs and other devices — and you’ve got a pretty sweet new media player that both gamers and movie pirates should absolutely love.

We don’t think that Microsoft will be promoting its console as a piracy box, of course, but we can’t imagine the company would complain if these new features helped it boost sales among the torrent-watching crowd.

SOURCE:
ARS TECHNICA

The Xbox One just got an incredibly cool feature that you won't see on the PS4

This is awesome. It's such an unnecessary pain in the ass that more manufacturers don't support a greater array of codecs, containers, and formats.

Typically, the only makers who did support stuff were tiny never heard of companies- mostly from Asia, typically China. It was a stopgap solution, often trading build quality and refinement of features in exchange for playback ability.

This is a big deal for MS as Sony will almost certainly not be following suit, as they are in part a content / media creator, and have a stake in controlling how media and content is delivered or accessible.

I'm planning on getting both. Neither console jumps out at me as so much better than the other, and there are games I'd like to play on both. Since my oldest already has the Xbox One, I'll likely get the PS4 first since I can already play on the Xbox. Who knows though. I've still got a ways to go before I start even thinking about it.